Recently I updated some of my configuration files on my Gentoo box. When I brought it back up, X had died and eth0 was failing with “configuration not set for eth0″.

After about an hour of searching for why eth0 wasn’t coming up, I paused and stepped back from it. I realized that my USB hub wasn’t lit up, meaning that USB wasn’t being recognized. Since I use a USB dongle for my Wireless adapter, it made me realize that it wasn’t working either.

I found out that hotplug, which controls when you plug in a new device in Linux while the system is running, has a complement coldplug which registers USB devices when the system has started up. Appararently up until recently hotplug also registered devices at startup. But the configuration change “fixed” that, and since I didn’t have coldplug registered to come up at boot, the USB devices weren’t being recognized.

So, I emerged coldplug (luckily I had it locally!) and added it to the boot runlevel. I restarted, and whammo! I had eth0 again.

So, in summary, if eth0 is not being recognized, make sure your system actually sees the device, whether it’s a pci (with lspci) or USB.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 23rd, 2006 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Solving “configuration not set for eth0″ on Gentoo Linux”

1. Twin Lnb says:

   June 6, 2010 at 1:03 pm

   My home got struck by lightning last Wednesday and my satellite television box got fried. :( I am trying to fix it myself. Do you know where I can find components inexpensively?

   Thanks,

   ~Carlota yamanoha~